Our Research
Early Black Cambridge Taxpayers, 1795–1825
By Leslie Brunetta
Early tax records—at first glance just a series of names and numbers—can provide an invaluable look at the Black Cambridge population in the early years of the republic, though these records rarely mention color.
The Lewises of Lewisville, Cambridge: Quock Walker’s Nieces and Nephews
By Leslie Brunetta
The Lewises of Cambridge were one of the most-documented African-descended families in the US in the 19th-century. The nieces and nephews of Quock Walker, they lived just off Cambridge Common and together carried on the Walker family’s steady activism in pursuit of civil rights.
How Charles Lenox, Black financier of the 1800s, became a hidden figure in history of Cambridge
By Leslie Brunetta
Monday May 4, 2022
“SUDDEN DEATH,” read an item in the Feb. 7, 1852, Boston Evening Transcript. “Charles Lenox, a colored man, and for many years past the porter at Old Harvard, dropped down dead at his residence in Cambridge a few days since. He was about 60 years of age, and leaves to his family a fortune of about $20,000.” At a time Harvard paid its president an annual salary of about $2,500, the size of Lenox’s estate was definitely newsworthy.
Published in Cambridge Day
Suzanne Revaleon Green has tales of May Parties, Magazine Beach and ‘pungs.’ Meet her here first.
By Paula Paris
Monday September 27, 2021
Suzanne Revaleon Green’s personal account of “Growing Up on Worcester Street” remembers World War I’s armistice and a time kids would wear metal roller skates, go swimming at Magazine Beach and participate in the lost rituals of May Parties, and when homes with coal stoves got daily deliveries of milk and cream and visits from the ice man, the fish man and the vegetable man. (You’ll also have to read to learn what a “pung” was.) But who is Suzanne Revaleon Green?
Published in Cambridge Day
Aaron Molyneaux Hewlett and family prospered as educators, lawyers, activists – and as Othello
By James Spencer
Monday August 2, 2021
This remarkable portrait of Aaron Molyneaux (also spelled Molineaux) Hewlett might puzzle students of U.S. history, for this sophisticated Black man lived in the United States at a time most people who looked like him were enslaved and considered subhuman. Even those who were free were usually limited to a small set of occupations. Hewlett, however, managed to find a way to prosper here in Cambridge.
Published in Cambridge Day
Brother Blue was Cambridge’s official storyteller
By James Spencer
Monday June 21, 2021
There was a moment in Cambridge history when a one-of-a-kind personality brightened our streets, parks and squares with his loving presence. He was, for that time at the end of the last millennium, a troubadour, a bard whose lyrical musings came wrapped with musical sounds. His simple message was one of love – love of nature, love of life and love of one another. His name was Brother Blue, and he was the official storyteller of Cambridge.
Published in Cambridge Day
A story of enslavement; a Juneteenth reflection
By James Spencer
Monday June 14, 2021
This week’s column is written in recognition of Juneteenth, which celebrates June 19, 1865, as the day when federal troops arrived in Galveston, Texas, to announce that all enslaved people were free – two and a half years after the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation.
Published in Cambridge Day
Remembering Cambridge’s Black veterans
By James Spencer
Monday May 31, 2021
On May 30, 1897, The Boston Post predicted a Memorial Day like no other. It reported that there were warships in Boston Harbor and an army artillery unit on Boston Common; both would fire their cannon as part of a momentous Memorial Day parade. Five thousand soldiers, including 200 Black Civil War veterans, would parade up Beacon Street for the unveiling of the memorial to the 54th Massachusetts Infantry.
Published in Cambridge Day
